Born‐digital biodiversity data: Millions and billions

Abstract

Given the dramatic pace of change of our planet, we need rapid collection of environmental data to document how species are coping and to evaluate the impact of our conservation interventions. To address this need, new classes of “born digital” biodiversity records are now being collected and curated many orders of magnitude faster than traditional data. In addition to the millions of citizen science observations of species that have been accumulating over the last decade, the last few years have seen a surge of sensor data, with eMammal's camera trap archive passing 1 million photo‐vouchered specimens and Movebank's animal tracking database recently passing 1.5 billion animal locations. Data from digital sensors have other advantages over visual citizen science observation in that the level of survey effort is intrinsically documented and they can preserve digital vouchers that can be used to verify species identity. These novel digital specimens are leading spatial ecology into the era of Big Data and will require a big tent of collaborating organizations to make these databases sustainable and durable. We urge institutions to recognize the future of born‐digital records and invest in proper curation and standards so we can make the most of these records to inform management, inspire conservation action and tell natural history stories about life on the planet.

Linking animal migration and ecosystem processes: data-driven simulation of propagule dispersal by migratory herbivores

“…For example, if the number of seeds excreted and germination success are unknown for a study system, this information could be omitted and the model could simply predict the location of seed dispersal events across space. More information on population distribution and individual-level movement, which is increasing exponentially thanks to advances in citizen science and tracking technology (Kays et al 2020), could be used to calibrate more accurately the animal migration module (i.e. model components UD, ORSIM and eRTG; Fig.…”

Global and national trends in documenting and monitoring species distributions

“…As stewards of their biodiversity, nations hold the key to incentivizing an improved information base and stand to gain the greatest benefits from broadly improved biodiversity information by enabling monitoring and robust management decisions. Despite the urgent need to meet international targets and numerous documentations of growing data ( 23 , 24 ), published work has yet to provide quantitative metrics to track nations’ progress in closing spatiotemporal biodiversity data gaps.…”

Mineralogical, petrological and planetological heritage. The (Italian) story so far

“…All these specimens have been carefully catalogued -encompassing the thin sections that have been accompanied by images realised by means of the optical and the scanning electron microscope as well as at the Fouriertransform infrared spectrometer-and the data have been made available freely on the online database Smithsonian Geogallery (https ://geoga llery .si.edu/gems-miner als-meteo rites -rocks ). As stated by Beolchini (2002), there is an ever increasing need to store historical collections in electronic databases to manage and publish specimen information on a national and international level, since archives and scientific museums can be considered important tools for cataloguing bio-and geodiversity alongside born-digital data (Suarez and Tsutsui 2004;Hanner et al 2009;Leo 2011;Gippoliti et al 2014;Farley et al 2018;Vicentini et al 2018Vicentini et al , 2020Walisch et al 2019;Kays et al 2020).…”